From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759940Ab0CPSYx (ORCPT ); Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:24:53 -0400 Received: from e32.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.150]:47892 "EHLO e32.co.us.ibm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756173Ab0CPSYw (ORCPT ); Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:24:52 -0400 Message-ID: <4B9FCCF2.7020901@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:24:50 -0700 From: Corey Ashford User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ingo Molnar CC: LKML , Peter Zijlstra , Frederic Weisbecker , Steven Rostedt , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo Subject: Re: [RFC] [PATCH 1/1] perf: add support for arch-dependent symbolic event names to "perf stat" References: <4B8F1B58.5000702@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <4B8FFE55.5070008@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20100311124608.GG31354@elte.hu> <4B993AAF.9050507@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20100311191441.GA7593@elte.hu> <4B99568D.30608@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <4B9EC50E.80702@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20100316094037.GF7961@elte.hu> In-Reply-To: <20100316094037.GF7961@elte.hu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 3/16/2010 2:40 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > * Corey Ashford wrote: > >> On 3/11/2010 12:46 PM, Corey Ashford wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 3/11/2010 11:14 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote: >>>> >>>> * Corey Ashford wrote: >>> [snip] >>>>> I'm not sure how that would work. The issue I am trying to solve >>>>> here is that Power arch chips have a large number of very >>>>> hardware-specific events that are not generalizable. Many of these >>>>> events not only have names, but other user-configurable bits as well >>>>> that select or narrow the scope of which exact events are recorded. >>>>> This issue is dealt with nicely in libpfm4, as it has mechanisms for >>>>> parsing event names and attributes (aka modifiers or unit masks), >>>>> and then produces a usable config field for the perf_events_attr >>>>> struct. >>>>> >>>>> Should I take it from the above that you are completely against the >>>>> idea of using an external library for hardware-specific event and >>>>> attribute naming? >>>> >>>> Could you give a few relevant examples of events in question, and the >>>> kind of >>>> configurability/attributes they have on Power? >>> >>> Here are a few examples for the Power A2 processor. I've distorted the >>> names because PMU architecture isn't publicly released yet. >>> >>> PM_DE_PMC_9:hrd_mask=0xff:hrd=0x22:pma_mask=0x3fff:pma=0x1b2d:culling_mode=3 >>> >>> PM_EX_0x03:lane=2:vlane=1 >>> PM_OWE_ENG_MAC_FULL:usu=3 >> >> Just a follow-up note to this... >> >> I learned that much of the high-level architecture of the new >> chip that IBM is working on has been publicly released recently, so >> I have "undistorted" the event names below: >> >> PM_DC_PMC_9:lpid_mask=0xff:lpid=0x22:pid_mask=0x3fff:pid=0x1b2d:marking_mode=3 >> PM_REGX_0x03:lane=2:vlane=1 >> PM_XML_ENG_MAC_FULL:sus=3 >> >> >> DC = Decompression/Compression accelerator >> PMC_9 = Peformance monitoring event 9 >> REGX = Regular eXpression accelerator >> XML = XML parsing accelerator >> pid = process id to match >> pid_mask = process id match mask >> lpid = logical partition id >> lpid_mask = logical partition id mask >> sus = source unit select >> lane, vlane = signal routing fields >> marking_mode = used to determine which accelerator work units to >> mark for performance monitoring > > Are these special-purpose instructions for compression/regex/xml-parsing > speedups? No, these events are for nest (aka uncore) accelerators for compression/regex/xml-parsing. These accelerators operate independently of the CPU threads and are given work units via request blocks which are then queued up by the accelerator. > > I think it would be rather useful to merge the hw (and sw) perf events with > the ftrace/tracepoints symbolic events space. That would be a one-stop-shop > for both perf and other tools to figure out the events we offer, their > characteristics, format, relationship to other events, etc. > > Ingo Ok, I will look into this. Thank you for your advice. - Corey